Intriguing article in Monday's Washington Post by Dana Milbank, one of the Post's best reporters: For Bush, a Tactical Retreat on Iraq 02/02/04.
According to Milbank's reporting, the Bush Administration wants to use the just-announced investigation of the WMD intelligence failure to postpone indefinitely (i.e., past the election) having to admit there was any problem on the Administration's part in the use of intelligence in going to war with Iraq.
This reminds me of a comment that Joe Conason made during his book-promotion tour for Big Lies a few months ago. He said that reality was finally hitting the Bush Administration in Iraq.
This article is further evidence of that. Thanks to the post-9/11 war fever, they were able to bluff their way into war in Iraq, defying world opinion, scaring a dubious American public into supporting war and rolling over the mostly timid doubts expressed by a spineless Republican Congress and a badly dispirited Democratic opposition. Getting the US involved in a long, nasty, ambiguous war in Iraq was a high-risk gamble. Perhaps taking inspiration from the Party's chief moral scold Bill Bennett, the Bush team was willing to bet the farm on war with Iraq.
But when your main justification for war is based on phony claims, that's not something that just goes away. Defending their WMD claims led them to out Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent, a serious criminal act that will continue to have consequences. It's likely that someone will eventually do prison time over that one.
Now their strategy seems to be: don't admit blame directly because that would show lack of manly determination, and have your supporters in Congress and the Republican echo-chamber (Fox News, talk radio, Washington Times, etc.) blame the CIA.
Reality is hitting them hard. And as long as people are seeing headlines like this, it's going to be hard to make that strategy work: Suicide Bombers Kill 56 in Attack on Iraqi Kurds Reuters 0/2/01/04.
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